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UO Enrollment already back to pre-pandemic levels

whilst OSU is up and PSU and TRU’s are way down. Last year VPFA Moffitt was predicting that the 2020 freshman bust would keep down overall enrollment for years, when the administration was pushing for the wage freeze and potential PPR cuts. Actually it only took one year to recover.

Good news as UO starts bargaining over faculty raises. I bet the OSU faculty are kicking themselves for accepting 3%/3%/3% before their enrollment numbers came out.

From Meerah Powell at OPB:

17 Comments

  1. honest Uncle Bernie 11/16/2021

    The numbers are good news? The number of gradute students, which is a big indicator of the health of the research programs, seems to be in precipitous decline over the past two years. The total number of students from the Institutional Research enrollment page is down nearly 10% from its peak nearly a decade ago. UO seems to be a place in decline. Are the students getting better? I don’t see much sign of that. Some colleagues claim they dropped admissions standards to fill the first year classes this fall. Any reports on SAT or ACT scores? Oh, right, didn’t they drop that as a req for admission?

    • GPA 11/17/2021

      HS GPA is a much better predictor of college success than SAT/ACT scores, and the incoming 2021 undergraduate class has the highest ever (3.73). That said, pandemic HS GPAs probably skew higher.

      • just different 11/17/2021

        I can’t find the source for this right now, but although it’s true that high school GPA is in absolute terms a slightly better predictor of college GPA than SAT/ACT scores are, what’s really striking is that (1) neither are particularly good predictors and (2) the correlation between HS GPA and SAT scores is very low. So you’re losing meaningful information about the applicant pool by not considering standardized test scores.

        • ODA 11/18/2021

          If only science were open and readable online. Perhaps this:

          Geiser, Saul & Studley, R. (2002). UC and the SAT: Predictive validity and differential impact of the SAT I and SAT II at the University of California. Educational Assessment. 8. 1 – 26. 10.1207/S15326977EA0801_01.

          But I could not read it to make sure. I remember tales of a large UC study at the turn of the century, that found many interesting things that could be spun in many directions. At the time it seemed to me that college success is very random, but they had so much data that p of .05 was a breeze (.0001 more like)… But the effects were small in any directions; however, high school gpa measures how likely you are to excel at keeping your ass in the seat for 4 years, and to add value a standardized test can tell someone how much information you can regurgitate on a given day (or the number of zeros in your parents savings account–you decide). Taken together they are usually described as ‘the best predictor’ we have.

          So I think Just Different has the take, and if you read most of the research (usually out of Education Programs) Those three points are there… and then the paper usually headlines or propose some social ill based on that p < 0.0001.

    • Observer 11/17/2021

      The number of grad students was “in precipitous decline” last year because nearly all humanities programs were forbidden by the administration to admit new PhD students that year.

      • uomatters Post author | 11/17/2021

        That would explain that.

  2. honest Uncle Bernie 11/16/2021

    And go here for detailed enrollment breakdown. Ghastly decline for CAS humanities, CAS social sciences. Most of the other schools doing OK or well, including CAS natural sciences. Law school enrollment on an uptrend. The decline of humanities and social sciences enrollment is what people who worry about such things should worry about. Forget about the law school subsidy. For one thing, you probably can’t stop it. For another, it looks like it might not last forever.

    Instead, think about why interest in humanities and social sciences is sinking, and what, if anything, can be done about it.

  3. thedude 11/16/2021

    Grad school numbers are down because they cut back first year fellowships and had a hiring freezing in the middle of recruiting season. Our 2020 cohort was 30 percent of its usual.

    The key question is will our union bargain for raises (above what OSU got) or spend most of its time and efforts creating more and more caucuses to divide up the faculty into a variety of special interests instead of focusing on the ONE thing we all collectively want: higher salaries. This is not a political party where we need figure out everyone’s special issues to get people to turn and vote. They got our vote already, as we voted to be a part of a union, and chiefly for economic issues (salaries and contract renewals).

    Are we really going to bargain about gender identity, diversity and inclusion on campus with the admin? What purpose do these caucuses serve in a collective bargaining unit? I get the childcare stuff, but even those for which it is an issue they are passionate about, fade as their kids enter school or pre school. So maybe that makes it a thing we should bargain over, but its also something that doesn’t uniformly benefit all union members (higher salaries let people buy more of whatever they want, including childcare).

    • Dog 11/17/2021

      Personally, I would go for better internal graduate student support than getting a salary increase. In the end, that would save me time in
      endless grant writing in order to support graduate students.

  4. Anas clypeata 11/17/2021

    “UO enrollment still down 3% from pre-pandemic levels; OSU enrollment up over 4%”

    “OSU enrollment up 4% over pre-pandemic levels, UO down 3%, other schools down a lot more”

    Some alternate headline proposals for you.

    • Dog 11/17/2021

      headlines no longer have anything to do with quantitative reality

      perception is everything and all decision making now stems
      from perception only …

    • uomatters Post author | 11/17/2021

      Thanks for volunteering to run this blog after I retire.

  5. Environmental Necessity 11/17/2021

    Did Economics enrollment experience the largest percentage decline across the humanities and social sciences (among programs with at least a decent number of students and excepting pre-international studies; I have to assume that is a program level change).

    Economics was the largest and remains among the largest majors but those data show a decline since 2016 from 1041 to 416 majors? Is that right? Among undergraduate programs it seems like no program has fallen as far over such a short period of time.

    What accounts for that?

    • uomatters Post author | 11/17/2021

      Return to normal. Huge increase in international students ended. B-school lowered standards to keep up enrollment. Econ still teaching many more than other SS.

      • thedude 11/17/2021

        What’s happened with the general social science enrollment over this time?

        Did word get out this was the way to get something like an Econ degree without having to pass econometrics?

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